It’s an exciting time in the world of television for female minorities right now
Some of the most popular shows on air, like Scandal and Sleepy Hollow, star black women; this thrilling shift in representation seems to have happened overnight (plus you know, a couple hundred years of oppression and slavery).
The only black star I can remember watching on TV as a child is LeVar Burton on Reading Rainbow, and he wasn’t even in the majority of any given episode.
Just a few years ago, I remember being excited over what looked like an increase of black actors on shows, but they were always just the friend, sidekick, and or the comedic element.
So after watching an episode of Sleepy Hollow, I was overjoyed that there were at least two shows with non-white leads. Add Lucy Liu in Elementary and Mindy Kaling in The Mindy Project, and you have four primetime shows that star under-represented groups of women.
A lot of critics have taken issue with the fact that these leads often end up with a love interest that is still white, but I call bullshit.
Interracial couples and the eventual product of those couples (mixed kids) are just as needed on television as any other unrepresented group.
They still promote diversity and reflect society’s changing image. The best thing about shows starring black females is eventually, we are reminded that the characters have families, meaning even more black actors on prime-time television!
Scandal has also provided us with a strong, intelligent, terrifying villain in the form of Rowan Pope, the lead’s father. He is a nice change from the more common black villain-trope, the thug.
And Sleepy Hollow has given us the rebellious sidekick Jenny who is the lead’s sister, eliminating the possibility of tokenism. These characters are just two of many that the shows have introduced.
Media expert, educator, and author of Far From Over: The Music and Life of Drake, Dalton Higgins suggests that we not only pay attention to what’s on our screens but what’s behind them as well.
“There are a bunch of things at play. When you see people on camera, it looks kind of diverse, you’ll see there are South Asian reporters, black reporters, and women—a really diverse mishmash that is supposed to represent demographic realities.
“But once you go up to the upper floors, senior management, executive producers, and screenwriters, you’ll notice it’s largely void of that black presence,” he says.
What excites Higgins most about Scandal is not Kerry Washington’s performance, but the creator of the show, Shonda Rhimes, a black woman.
“When looking to see if shows are more nuanced, that’s what excites me more—Shonda Rhimes is an African-American woman, director, and producer.”
Hopefully we are witnessing a huge and subtle twist in pop-culture, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Four shows, two of them starring black women, means that out of 21 hours a week, of prime-time TV on major networks, only two hours star black people.
This bleak statistic was slightly less depressing at the beginning of the television year when in the fall, NBC’s Ironside, starring Blair Underwood as a paraplegic cop, premiered. The show, however, was cancelled after only nine episodes, leaving it to the TV ladies of Black America to hold down the fort.
Black people make up only 10 per cent of the lead characters in prime television, and white people make up 80 per cent. This shouldn’t be surprising, and it certainly isn’t new, but it’s easy to forget with all the weekly excitement surrounding Olivia Pope.
Don’t get me wrong, this is still a fantastic change in television programing — 10 per cent is way better than the five per cent we had last year — but it also leads me to another criticism.
Come on Canada, don’t you think it’s time you also stepped it up in the world of representations in the media? For a country that tries so hard to create a narrative of a freer, more inclusive, open version of America, Canada is slacking.
It’s been about two years since Little Mosque on the Prairie ended, and what has aired since? I’m not sure if anyone has told the Canadian programmers this yet, but having the word ‘black’ in the title, doesn’t count (sorry Orphan Black fans, it’s still a great show).
As I’ve mentioned, two shows a week hardly mean that the U.S is suddenly free of racism either. The Golden Globes were rightfully criticized because they somehow managed to show non-white people on stage a whopping three times in the entire night.
This did not come as a surprise to Higgins.
“The Oscars are typically white, or dominant culture. It doesn’t take a media analyst or an academic to look at the award shows, in the audience or on stage, and see it is clear that diversity has been and is an issue.”
It’s shameful, he says, that many people who are true lovers of music and film have tuned out mainstream award shows.
“Look at the Grammys, for example,” says Higgins. “Kanye West drops a fantastic album, Drake, Jay-Z’s Holy Grail, Kendrick Lamar, the list goes on and on. Yet Macklemore wins?”
Macklemore, a white rapper, himself acknowledged that Kendrick Lamar was “robbed.”
“These award shows are supposed to be evolving, representing current, contemporary realities, which are that much more diverse, but when you look at the bottom line, that’s not what we’re seeing,” says Higgins.
In a year where so many black actors have been praised for their work on the big screen, it will be interesting to see who is actually credited for their work at the Oscars, but like Higgins, many people have already dismissed the award show as unimportant to the development of racial representations in the media.
“Awards help your career definitely, but a lot of people in racialized communities don’t give a rat’s ass about these shows,” says Higgins. “People are not looking to the Oscars to validate their existence. It’s still very much an old white boy’s club, and they’re becoming increasingly irrelevant.”
It is important to recognize that while there are two fabulous shows on prime-time television, black films are often snubbed, despite their success at the box office.
Since prime-time television is so deeply lacking non-stereotypical or token black characters, where should we turn to when looking to feel like we matter to the world?
Higgins puts a lot of faith in the internet.
“The web allows a democratization of how creators create, producers produce,” he says. “Who cares about Hollywood?! I’m more interested in ‘Hollyhood’. What people are creating on the ground. Where there isn’t a class in film making. There’s just incredible work out there already that wont get the time of day from the gatekeepers of award shows but that’s where you’ll find some of the best music, cinema, documentaries.”
“That is just what it is,” he says. “[Do it yourself] Stop trying to get approval from those old white men.”
While Higgins is right, and the internet is a great forum for people within the black community to represent themselves to the world, that’s not enough for me. I want to be able to come home after class, flop on the couch and see realistic characters that look more like me, whenever and whatever station I tune in to.
Basically everyone needs to step up their representation game. Sleepy Hollow, Scandal, Elementary, and The Mindy Project are fantastic shows. Sure, they have their flaws.
By no means are they at HBO level, but in my books, these cable stations are doing a much better job a reflecting how our society actually looks than The Newsroom or Girls.
So to tweak an earlier statement, hopefully we are witnessing the start of what could be a huge shift in representations of black people in pop culture.
Ending on the side of optimism, the primetime shows mentioned here are laying a lot of groundwork for positive and fuller representations of people of colour.
These shows give me a little hope that maybe in our own lifetime, the media will grow to fully reflect our global community.
Amelia Ruthven-Nelson
Senior Staff
